Shoemakers since 1718

Love for the craft

Craftsmanship

Schoenfabriek van Bommel has been making luxury shoes for gentlemen and ladies since 1718. Floris and his two brothers are the 9th generation to continue their family’s shoemaking tradition. As well as the fashionable Floris van Bommel brand, Schoenfabriek van Bommel also carries the centuries-old classic men’s brand Van Bommel.

Floris explains how Schoenfabriek van Bommel operates:

“Much of our collection is still produced in our own factory in Moergestel. For us, it is a matter of principle to have our own fully-fledged shoe factory instead of cutting costs all the way to a faraway foreign country. We like to outsource as little work as possible anyway. Design, product development, manufacturing, warehouses, sales, the online shop, our own brand stores and customer support - we manage it all in-house...

Our factory is in the heart of the village of Moergestel, and is specialised in the Goodyear and Blake construction methods. We produce about 600 pairs of shoes every day.

The shoe components not produced in Moergestel are made in various shoe factories in Portugal. The better shoe factories specialise in a single type of shoe. This means you need several factories to create an amazingly rounded collection...

Most of the leather for our shoes comes from Tuscany, Italy. Our leather specialists travel there monthly, and even weekly in peak season, to inspect batches of leather and guide new developments.

I travel there twice a year with our design team to visit our main tanners and discuss new developments. Every season, we use more than 100 new colours and leather types. I am confident in saying we are one of the world’s best in this respect...

The amount of work needed to manage all this is insane. There’s quite a lot of internal grumbling about the work, but it does result in collections that explode off the shelves each season.

Shoemaking genuinely is a very beautiful craft. Especially the way we do it: as real shoemakers, still with a traditional eye for quality, fit, and detail."

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